GLASGOW 1967: THE LISBON LIONS, BBC1, 9pm
FOOTBALL fans will surely love this documentary, which tells the personal stories of the Lisbon Lions and offers a treasure trove of archive footage and anecdotes from friends and fans, but I found it quite sad.
“So you’ve come to Glasgow have you? Pretty grim, isn’t it?” This is how a reporter portrayed the city in those days, as a place of poverty, violence and slums, but as the players and fans offer their memories of growing up in Glasgow, we hear about pride and community, as well as tough but dignified work.
The triumphant team were all local boys and had beaten “impoverishment, illness and intolerance before they’d even pulled on their football boots”. What chance would such local boys have these days?
But it’s not all nostalgia for a lost era. You can’t help but smile when old men recall the jubilation of those days: “You were dead excited. Jumpin’ aboot! Ya dancer, ye know!”
WHITE GOLD, BBC2, 10pm
FROM the writer of The Inbetweeners comes this new series about a bunch of loud-mouthed window glazing salesmen.
It’s set in 1980s Essex, the peak time and location, surely, of the grabby, pushy, money-obsessed chancers we know from so many sitcoms and comedy sketches.
And this show seems like more of the same. I didn’t see anything to set it apart from its predecessors except lots of swearing and crude language. I’m not being prim, but this type of thing means the comedy lacks the warmth of others like Only Fools And Horses, where we loved the Cockney wide-boy characters as they had charm.
There’s no charm here. There is lots of loud lads’ banter between the salesmen, all permitted as this is the 80s and political correctness doesn’t exist yet. I found it tiring after a while.
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